This case describes a change effort to move a police agency to become a community policing organization. The community policing
effort was seen as a means to make a transformational change to become a learning organization with the goal of improving
the delivery of police services. The case describes the steps taken to meet the new vision of community policing as well as
the steps taken to deal with the challenges or realities of trying to make change happen. The lens for this case is the leadership
role across the stages of change (exploration, planning, implementation, monitoring and institutionalization) in building
capacity within the organization to sustain the change effort. The capacity building focused on incorporating systems thinking
into the mindset of the members of the organization, breaking down the command and control mindset by building a new norm
around high involvement of committed teams, and developing skill sets to support continuous learning and improvement in order
to align organizational systems. A key lesson learned is that effective leaders do not just prepare an organization prior
to a change effort. They must have the patience to constantly build the capacity for change among organizational members throughout
the various stages of the change effort.
Keywords Building capability - Transformational change - Case study - Community policing